County website earns ‘transparency’ award

Tuesday

Apr 9, 2013 at 11:47 AMApr 9, 2013 at 11:48 AM

Cynthia Grau

The official website for Livingston County has improved by leaps and bounds, going from an “F” to recently receiving the Sunny Seal Award from the Sunshine Review organization, a group whose goal is to create state and local transparency.Livingston County is one of eight counties in Illinois to achieve this level of transparency. Earning the Sunny Seal Award indicates the level of hard work and commitment the county has put into improving the county’s website and improving transparency.Alina Hartley, administrative resource specialist for the county, said that this is the first time the county has been given this recognition. It hasn’t been reviewed since it was given an “F” in 2008, but after improvements were made, Hartley said another review was requested.Many changes to the website are what increased the grade, including adding contact numbers for elected officials and the board chairman, Freedom of Information Act requests and information about FOIA response times, prior budgets and audits, as well as union contracts, to name a few.“At one time, we were receiving a lot of suggestions for improvements to the website ... to make it more user friendly,” Hartley said. She added they are also considering an evaluation tool for users to rate the website.“It’s difficult for us to evaluate that because we’re familiar with it, whereas, if you’re a member of the public visiting the website for the first time, how easy is it for you to find the information you’re looking for?”Hartley said a number of people had input on the changes, including former information technology supervisor Scott Koeppel, Diaz Sign Art, who worked on design development when the website was initially online, as well as people in each department.“Each of the departments had input on their own page as far as what is included on the page and what information they want to provide to the public, so there are a lot of people who have had input to the website. Kris Studley has also done work on the website,” she said.As for the website, Hartley said there are still more improvements on the horizon.“Everyone’s working to make improvements and one of the goals of the IT committee is to make the website as transparent as possible. We do still have some hold-ups. We don’t have the capability with our accounting software right now to provide a lot of the information that’s requested on a regular basis, so those are some things we’ll be working toward,” she said.

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